Bruce R. Evans

Bruce Evans was elected to the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust in 2009 and became chairman in 2017. Mr. Evans is a graduate of Huntington High School in Huntington, West Virginia, and attended Vanderbilt as a recipient of a James W. Stewart Jr. Honor Scholarship in Engineering. He earned a Bachelor of Engineering at Vanderbilt in 1981, with majors in mechanical engineering and economics. He also earned a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1986. 

Mr. Evans is the managing partner of Evans Capital, a private investment fund he founded in 2019. He is also a senior advisor to Summit Partners, an alternative investment firm focused on venture capital and growth equity that manages more than $35 billion in capital. Mr. Evans was chairman of the Summit Partners Board of Managers for seven years, from 2012 to 2019, co-managing partner from 1999 to 2011, and a member of the firm’s board and management leadership group for 20 years, after co-leading a successful leveraged recapitalization of Summit in 1999. During his 38-year career as a venture capitalist, Mr. Evans served as a director of 40 companies, including 14 public companies. He also was a member of the board of directors of the National Venture Capital Association from 2009 to 2014 and was founder and initial chairman of the NVCA’s Growth Equity Group during his term on the board. He was named to the Forbes Midas List from 2006 to 2009, has been featured as an expert presenter on the topic of growth equity in the Harvard Business School Online Course, Alternative Investments, and is the current chairman of the board of the Greater Nashville Venture Capital Association.

Mr. Evans is also currently a director of three private venture stage companies – Clockworks Analytics, a provider of cloud-based fault detection and diagnostics applications for facilities management; AI Proteins, a newly founded biotechnology company that designs and engineers synthetic mini-proteins; and PlaneSense, an operator of a fractional ownership private aircraft network. His prior public company directorships include Analog Devices, a designer and manufacturer of high-performance semiconductor products; Fleetcor Technologies, a provider of fleet credit cards and other specialized payment products for businesses; Hittite Microwave, a provider of communications semiconductor products that was acquired by Analog Devices in 2014; optionsXpress, an online stock and options brokerage firm; and Pediatrix Medical Group, a comprehensive provider of neonatology services and other health solutions that was later renamed Mednax. Mr. Evans was also a member of the initial board of directors of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center after its 2016 separation from Vanderbilt University and is a member today. Before joining Summit Partners in Boston in 1986, he sold mainframe computers for IBM in Louisville, Kentucky.